


a series of tumblr prompts.

by humancredentials



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 09:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9813764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humancredentials/pseuds/humancredentials
Summary: Each chapter is a separate work, inspired by prompts received on Tumblr. They all take place at different times in the show's universe.





	1. "it's only one night, we'll just share the bed."

She used to fantasize about this.

Of all the ways she used to think about him, the ways he used to keep her up at night, the little scenarios she’d concoct in her lonely head, this had been one of her favourites. 

She is still young, so is he. They are in a town, middle America, somewhere she’s never heard of that doesn’t even have its own airport. They’d been driving for days to get here to investigate a case whose details don’t matter and wouldn’t you know it, in this sad little town, their only motel is nearly all booked up and they’ll just have to share a room. 

Oh, there’s only one bed? Such a shame.

She used to fantasize about this.

She is pretending to sleep on her side, curled up in the most boring pyjamas she owns because even in her fantasies, she did not plan for this. She did not bring anything to seduce him with. 

He climbs into bed with her, slowly, as if not to wake her. He knows she is awake, can tell by the rhythm of her breathing. He starts the night on his side, but he is drawn to her in his sleep. When she wakes, the glow of the motel sign illuminating her in reds and greens, the heavy weight of him is up against her back and his breath is hot on her neck.

She would press back against him, feel him grip her tighter.

She used to fantasize about this. 

He doesn’t say anything. In her fantasies, her loveably verbose Mulder is oddly silent. He touches her as he pretends to still be sleeping, a warm and confident hand slipping into the silk pants she wears. 

It’s that simple. 

She is still young, so is he. He touches her because he wants to, because she’s wanted him to for so long that she doesn’t even remember what it’s like to be touched by anybody else. 

He loves her, he tells her in the morning. He’s always loved her, would always love her, has never loved another the way he loves her. She is convinced that they are the only two people who have ever truly been meant for each other. 

“Ma’am?”

The teenager’s voice is sharp, cutting through the haze of her thoughts like a scalpel. She shakes her head, attempting to get back on course, away from the dangerous road she’d been heading down, the one with the dead end.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said,” she says, a little breathless, a little embarrassed. 

“I said there’s only one room. Some convention here in town, y’know, we’re almost all booked up.” He tries to sound apologetic, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off the screen of his phone to even look at her.

She used to fantasize about this.

She nods her acceptance, feels her breath catching in her throat as the clerk enters in her information before handing her a card key. One key, one room, one bed.

She finds Mulder sitting where she left him in the parking lot, looking up at the stars through the dirty windshield of their FBI issued SUV. The sky seems so much bigger, so much darker than it used to.

“They have a vacancy, but uh there’s only one room, so … I mean, I went ahead and accepted because I don’t want to drive anymore tonight and it doesn’t look like you do either, so I just … I hope that’s okay, I know it’s not ideal,” she is rambling, looking anywhere but at his beloved, older face.

She is not young, neither is he. Not anymore.

“It’s only one night,” he says with an indifferent shrug. “We’ll just share the bed.”

She nods, picking up the luggage she packed alone. She looks at his bag, hopes he remembered everything he needed. Warm socks, a change of shoes, his meds. 

She misses him so fiercely, so profoundly in this moment that she finds herself blinking back tears. She follows him inside, down the hallway to their room. The one on the end. The one that has the first bed she’ll share with him in over three long years. 

She used to fantasize about this.


	2. "i can't believe this is finally happening."

She wakes up feeling sleep-drunk on warm tea and warm conversation, like she is the jet lagged one with her shaky legs and drowsiness. She feels like she is floating, with the alien glow of the fish tank illuminating the universe of his apartment. 

Her stockinged feet make no noise on the old floorboards, not even when she makes the detour around the spot where she thinks she may have bled to death once. It always creaks under her insignificant weight but tonight, tonight it stays silent, as if agreeing to keep her wakefulness a secret, as if it knows her destination and is silently encouraging her. 

_Go, go, go, I won’t tell._

He is lovely in moonlight, with his strong jaw and messy hair. Book perched upon his bare chest, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose and she is filled with a sense of calm, a peacefulness she only achieves when she knows he is safe and at rest. 

She wonders what he dreams of; lost girls or crop circles that never really were, perhaps. Or maybe he dreams of this, of her, of all the things she is about to say and do to him. She hopes he dreams of her soft hands, her sweet mouth, the curve of her hip.

She is stealthy, soft and confident when she approaches his bed. 

But he is awake before she even sits down.

His eyes, tired and unfocused, tell her just how pleased he is to see her here.

“Hey,” she whispers, a soft breath of a word as she removes the book from his chest, marking his page before setting it down on the table beside him, where all of his half-read books make their home.

“You okay?” he asks, his legs shifting beneath the thin sheet that hides him from her. She feels his right leg pressed against her, the heat of him flowing through her, resting in the pit of her belly.

She hums, an affirmative answer to his never ending worry about her well-being. She does not know how to tell him how okay she is, how there is now a part of her that is more awake than it has ever been. She suddenly feels foolish and flushed and delights in the wonder of it. She feels young, unscarred.

“I, um, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you back there,” she tells him and he shrugs, an acceptance of her half mumbled apology. His right hand has found its way into her lap, into the firm grip of her own. She traces the lengths of his fingers, the back of his hand, the flutter of the pulse at his wrist.

She brings it up to her mouth, presses a kiss to it, feels it skip under the weight of her lips and smiles before settling his hand back down in her lap.

“I missed you,” she says, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she’s even thought them through but they are true, she realizes, painfully so. She has missed him countless times over the last seven years, through restless nights and nameless tragedies, she has missed the comfort of him. In their darkest days, she has missed him while he stood beside her. 

This time, though, is different and she is embarrassed by the neediness in her words, but it is worth it for the pleasantly surprised look on his face, as if he’s been waiting for this.

“I missed you, too,” he admits. “Not finding the evidence I went looking for somehow isn’t as fun without your satisfied ‘I-told-you-so’ face.”

She laughs, ducking her head and pressing her chin against her chest. His smirk in response is childlike, joyful in his ability to bring her little moments of happiness. 

He is gentle when he tugs on her arm, pulling her to him, and it takes some maneuvering in the skirt that she wears, but she is nestled up against him before she knows it. 

“I can’t believe this is finally happening,” he murmurs into her hair and though nothing is actually happening, not yet, she knows what he means by ‘this’.

This, this step over the border between his living room and his bedroom. 

This, this allowing him to hold her, his naked body with her fully clothed one. 

This, this giving in to feelings that she has known and felt for so long, feelings she thinks she may have been born with, just waiting for him.

“I can,” she whispers. “I believe it.”


	3. things you always meant to say but never got the chance.

**_i._ **

She has a lifetime worth of words on her tongue, weighing her down like an anchor on one of those ships of his, the ones she thought he sometimes loved more than he loved her.

But she was the favourite, that’s what her mother would say. Her siblings, too, probably. And she’s convinced she only ever earned the title because of how many things she didn’t say.

She wouldn’t cry when he would leave, not like her sister would. She wouldn’t yell about the injustice of it all like her brothers. She’d simply wait for him to come home, welcome him with open arms as if he never left but he was always leaving.

She thinks she meant to tell him her secret once or twice, remembers gripping onto her mother’s hand so tight, watching him dock. She remembers the feel of the words in her throat, then swallowing them back down again until they settled in her deep in her belly.

“I missed you,” she finally says to no one. “I always missed you.” and the words are years too late when they weakly escape the cage of her mouth, and it is a good thing he is not around anymore for them to make their way to his ears.

Because she is a rocky sea, a violent feeling thing, and her father did always prefer calmer waters.

**_ii._ **

“As ridiculous as this sounds, I think I might love him,” she whispers, and smiles when she pictures the reaction to the words.

She travels back in time to a late summer evening, the images in her brain coming to her in sepia tones, a well faded memory. She’d developed an innocent crush on the boy down the road in base housing, had made the mistake of telling Melissa all about it.

“He seems weird, Dana,” her sister had told her then. “He’s always alone, never talks to anyone. Don’t waste your time.”

_But that is what I like about him_ , she’d thought. Even at thirteen. Maybe she would simply always love the outcasts, the ones with soft lips and sad eyes.

It is far less innocent now, all these years later, and it is more than a simple fascination this time. It is more than just professional respect. She thinks he might be a part of her, might be in her veins. Melissa would say they might have been born from the same star. She believed in things like that, with her reckless love and romantic heart.

“I really do think I might love him,” she says again.

“I knew it,” Melissa would reply this time.

She tries to hear the teasing tone of her sister’s voice. She tries to picture the familiar know-it-all grin of her mouth.

But all she can see is the spot that will never truly be clean, where the blood has soaked into the floorboards.

**_iii._ **

She didn’t know how to talk to her.

She had never felt so foolish, so blindsided by love, than when she sat on the cold tile floor and looked into the eyes of her daughter.

He saved her from saying the very wrong things when he came in, crouched down on the floor and made a sick little girl laugh. She’d never heard her laugh before, hadn’t heard much of anything out of her. He was always good like that, her champion of broken things and people. He always brought out the very best in them.

“Are you the parents?” she remembers being asked, later, when things got bad.

We could raise her, she thought. If she lives, he could teach me how to be with her. How to make her smile.

The “yes, we’re her parents” was on the tip of her tongue, almost slipping out with an embarrassing ease. It was only his obvious discomfort at the question that stopped her.

“I’m her mother,” is what came out instead.

He did not need to be responsible for another dead girl.

**_iv._ **

She is still wrapped up in his arms, fully clothed. His breath is on her neck and she can feel the warm tear slip out of the corner of her eye. She feels weak, tired, nauseous. He is solid, strong, the unexpected love of her life. The scene remains the same, she simply changes the script.

“I want you to go home.”

She should laugh it off, tell him she’s going to be fine.

“Come home with me,” she offers and he chuckles, soft and low in her ear.

“Why Agent Scully, that is very bold of you,” he teases and the depth of affection in his voice makes her shiver. He simply tightens his hold.

“I’m serious, Mulder. You and I can be on a flight out of here in the morning.”

She is always wanting to go somewhere, to get away with him, to disappear into the endless dark that holds his fascination. He has made an adventurer out of her, turned her restless. But right now, she simply wants to go home. His or hers, there’s hardly a difference anymore.

“Scully, I –” he starts to say and she is embarrassed that she is on the verge of begging. She is angry that he would reduce her to this, now, trembling in his arms in an Oregon motel room as if she’s twenty-eight years old again.

Let’s leave, she thinks, and let’s never come back. Let’s leave because I love you and I don’t think I’m sick, I think I’m pregnant and I’m afraid.

“Forget it,” she snaps instead and she can feel his body tighten in response to her tone.

“No, Scully, we’ll go. This isn’t important. We’ll go home.”

Just like that, he has grown up right before her eyes. Seven years have passed in a heartbeat. He will settle her restless bones.

She feels the relief of it all rush through her until she wakes up, sweating and alone, the not-quite-a-widow with a funeral to plan.

**_v._ **

He suggests she writes it down in a letter.

She wants to tell him where to shove it, but promises to try anyway.

She has never had a way with words, her speech has often been stilted and formal and hardly the tone that would be appropriate for a child and she thinks maybe, just maybe, she was never truly meant to be a mother in the first place.

She makes endless attempts, but the first line always comes out wrong.

_Dear William, how are you?_

As if it’s a conversation.

_Dear William, please forgive me._

As if it’s a confession.

_Dear William, here’s what happened._

As if it’s a report.

_Dear William, it wasn’t that you weren’t wanted…_

And it’s the depth of her wanting him that undoes her, that locks her in a bathroom sometimes in motels on dark stretches of highway, that makes her sick.

_Dear William, I had dreams for you. Nothing specific, nothing significant. I didn’t dream of what you’d become when you grew up, I didn’t dream of when you’d first fall in love, I didn’t dream of the kids you’d have one day and maybe that was my brain’s way of warning me that you were always destined to be gone._

And instead of writing a letter to her now five year old son she feels like she is writing a eulogy, and she can’t stand the thought of another one of those.

“I can’t, Mulder,” she tells him. “I can’t write it down.”

Her guilt and self-hatred are a part of her now, just as much as he is. She will carry around her love for him and the loss of him for as long as she lives, not to be spilled in ink on a piece of paper.

“Then we’ll tell him one day, Scully.”

**_vi._ **

He is her soulmate, she is sure of that now.

She knows what he would say if she told him.

“I didn’t think you’d be the type to believe in soulmates, Scully,” with that teasing glint in his eye, that challenge in the set of his jaw.

She wasn’t, not really, as much as she fought against fate. She found the thought of soulmates somewhat sad in a way, for those who went their whole lives without the fortune of finding theirs.

But fate is the only way she knows how to explain what lead her to him forever ago, what kept her there, what made her leave, what made her return. Her decisions have always been her own freewill, of course, but he was always going to be her ultimate destination.

She feels the familiar pang of regret at the thought of wasted time, wasted years, wasted opportunities. She wishes she’d filled their silences more, confessed more to him, held onto him tighter.

She lets her secrets flow now like blood for him, warm and thick. 

_I think I loved you earlier than you loved me. I fell before you did._

_I came back for you, all those years ago, only for you._

_I stayed alive for you only because I didn’t want you to watch me die. Looking back, I wish the cancer had won._

_I wanted you to be Emily’s father. Would you have raised her with me?_

_I’d have kissed you years before you ever tried to kiss me._

_I knew how to hit a baseball._

_I almost asked you to not to go to Oregon._

_I felt abandoned, left alone to make the biggest mistake of my life._

_I loved, loved, loved you._

_You are my soulmate._

She has lost count of her secrets, they’ve slipped away from her like the years have gone by. She doesn’t remember when she lost him, she thinks she was seventy. But she has forgotten how long ago that was, though it feels like a lifetime. Maybe more than one.

It has taken her all these countless years without him to make her believe in soulmates and he would laugh at that.

“That is so you, that is _so_ _Scully_ , needing immortality to prove that you can love someone forever.”

She just forgets what his voice would sound like saying it.


	4. “promise me you’ll look after your father.”

She doesn’t need to be told it’s him. 

She sees him at the end of a hallway, all long teenage limbs and unruly hair and there is something about the way he is standing. She has never seen him walk before, never got the chance, but his gait is recognizable and she knows.

Maybe he knows too, judging by the nod of acknowledgement he gives her over a crowd of the sick and dying. Perhaps he’s seen her in his dreams, heard her off-key voice singing to him in his memories on lonely Wyoming nights.

She approaches him like she’d approach a stranger, ignoring the overwhelming pressure she feels in her chest, the instinct to wrap her arms around him. 

_You are not his mother, you are a doctor, you have not held him in over fourteen years, he is not yours anymore, Dana, don’t touch him or you’ll never stop, you won’t be able to let him go twice, you are not his mother, you are not his mother, you are not his mother._  

“William? William Van de Kamp?”

He goes by Will, Monica told her, and she didn’t ask how she knew that. She doesn’t want to know what other secrets Monica holds; how she found him so quickly or why she knew everything about him. 

But no, she will not call him Will, she does not have the right. He is not familiar. 

He bites his lower lip, nods, stares back at her with her own eyes.

“Thank you for coming, I know this all must seem very strange to you,” she says softly in the voice she reserves for children she loves, for people she wants to save but can’t. Mulder always called it her dream voice. He says it’s the one he heard when he screamed for her in his sleep.

“I’m not sick,” he says, and it’s the first words she ever hears her son speak. “I’m not like everyone else here.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Neither are you,” he observes.

“No,” she exhales. “Neither am I. I need you to follow me.” 

He does without question and she wonders what Monica told him to get him here. 

He walks beside her and he is much taller than she is. Her heart hurts, she can hear the blood pounding in her ears as she leads him down the hallway. A hallway full of people who don’t stand a chance. People like Agent Einstein, people like his dead parents. People like Mulder.

The room she has him in is stark white, morgue-like in temperature and atmosphere. He is slumped in the chair she left him in, sweat soaked and shivering, hair plastered to his bloody forehead. 

He only moves when he hears the door click behind her. His tired eyes take in her frantic appearance, the awkward boy next to her. She sees the moment realization kicks in. His breathing falters, his jaw clenches. His son, three days old in his mind, standing here now at fifteen.

“Is this him?” And it’s William who asks, who seems to know exactly what his purpose is here. 

“Yes,” she says, and he’s already rolling up his sleeve before she can grab his arm. Her fingers touch him, feeling his skin, no longer baby soft and she tries to blink back the tears. 

William nods, watching her as she prepares for the transfusion. His eyes are fixated on her and she wonders what he sees when he looks at her. A strange, bloodthirsty woman needing to save the world or his long lost mother, trying to save just one life?

Mulder doesn’t flinch at the needle and that’s how she knows how close she is to losing him. But as she is leaned over him, brushing the hair out of his eyes, his voice whispers to her, raspy and nearly gone. 

“We made a pretty good looking kid, Scully,” he tells her with a pride that weakens her knees. 

“Yeah,” she says softly. “We did.” Mulder closes his eyes, too weary for anything else. If this doesn’t work, then at least he saw him.

She watches as the blood starts to flow between them, from one end of her world to the other. This is it, she thinks, this is all she should bother trying to save. 

“I know who you are,” he tells her, an affection in his voice that surprises her. She wants his anger and his confusion and his blame. She almost wants him to hate her as much as she hates herself. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs and she’s not sure what for. She’s sorry she brought him into this world, sorry she didn’t hold him enough, sorry she handed him over to strangers when things got tough, sorry for over fourteen years of silence, sorry for selfishly dragging him out here to save a man he knew for seventy-two hours in 2001. 

William shrugs, whether it’s acceptance of her apology or indifference, she isn’t sure. She hears the cry of a baby outside of the door, a hysterical shriek. She should go check, go see if she can save someone else’s child if she wasn’t ever able to save her own. 

“I, um, I’ll be right back,” she says. “Please… promise me you’ll look after your father.”

“Of course.”

William nods, reaching his free hand out to hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. She nearly chokes on the sob that threatens to escape as she closes the door behind her.


	5. “i’m tired of being your secret.”

Her first year at the hospital, she goes on a date. To keep up appearances, that’s what they said. Fox Mulder? Haven’t heard from Fox Mulder in years. He is gone, see, and I’m a doctor now and I go on dates because he’s probably long dead for all I know, Sir. Six feet underground again. 

It’s what she’d say if anyone ever asked but nobody ever does. 

She is slightly tipsy when she gets home, unsteady on her heels after a year in her plain doctor shoes. Her mouth burns with the heat of her lies and the wine she washed them down with. 

She finds him feigning sleep on the couch, she knows his breathing well enough. It’s A Wonderful Life hums softly in the background, though it’s only late November. Little Mary, telling George she will love him until the day she dies. 

“How was it?” he murmurs, his curiosity getting the best of him as he gives up the act. 

“Weird,” she admits. “I don’t know. I haven’t been on a date in fifteen years, Mulder.”

“It wasn’t really a date. Plus, I took you to that knock-off version of IHOP last month.”

She laughs, louder than intended, and she blames the alcohol rather than the soft and sleepy scent of him she smells as she deposits herself at the end of the sofa, still in her coat. He moves his feet momentarily before dropping them clumsily in her lap. 

“Fine. I haven’t been on a _real_ date in fifteen years. And this seemed unnecessary. Nobody asks about you, Mulder, not in a whole year. And if they really are watching us, me going on a date with a surgeon isn’t going to throw them off.”

“You look nice,” he says softly, his toes wiggling in her lap, playing with the fabric of her dress.

She is annoyed, classically in love with him beyond reason.

“Thank you.” It comes out as a sigh, but it makes her blush. She feels the innocent heat of his words warm her chest, her neck, her cheeks.

“I know you’re frustrated, Scully,” he tells her. “I know, I am too. But it’s the only way. Trust me, I’m tired of being your secret.”

Oh, but he’s always been her best kept one. 

She has always held him closer than the others, since the very beginning. She was always worried that the truth of him would spill out of her like blood and he’d disappear. Nobody would ever know he’d been there. 

“You’re a secret worth keeping, Mulder,” she concedes, eyes distractedly watching George Bailey’s futile attempts to run away from the life he’s destined to live.

"Did he try to kiss you?” he asks.

“No.”

“No? He was with you for four hours and he didn’t try to kiss you? What an idiot.” His tone is all amusement, no jealousy, and his eyes sparkle with the teasing nature of it.

“You were with me for five years before you tried to kiss me,” she reminds him. “Seven before you actually did it.” And he grins, closed mouth like he did at the beginning of the millennium, young and sweet. 

“Well, it’s well documented that I’m also an idiot.”

He is irresistible, this hidden gem of hers, and she maneuvers herself until the length of her body is pressed against his and if this sofa was leather and her hair was shorter, she might momentarily believe in time travel.

She has kept him locked away in basements, in fourth floor apartments, in motel rooms, in this old house and in her tired heart. She will keep him there for as long as she needs to, for as long as it beats. 

He kisses her as George promises Mary the moon.


	6. "no one needs to know."

It is reckless, the way he kisses her. Absolutely foolish how quickly she has gotten to the heart of him, seen through his defensive sarcasm and unarmed him with a twitch of her lips and a sparkle in her eye.

If he didn’t know her better (he doesn’t know her, really, not at all) he’d swear this was a planned seduction, that this was going to happen all along assuming he’d fall for it (he fell for her), but she is not that conniving. She is not that calculated. This has caught her equally by surprise.

He feels young and delightfully stupid, pressing her into the too-firm mattress of his hotel bed. She is all hands and mouth, on his jaw and in his hair and down his back and she bites his lip when he moves his hips just right. 

She’s the one in nothing but plain white underwear (another sign that this was not a calculated move on her part) but he’s the one who feels naked. With her innocent questions and quiet determination, she has stripped him of his pretenses and he’s been laid bare before her. His life story, missing kid sister and all, spilled from his lips before he sipped from hers.

She whispers in his ear that she’s never done this before and he freezes for a moment because that can’t be true, but she laughs (it is the first time he hears it) and clarifies that she means she’s never done this before with a stranger, which he practically is. 

He can’t tell her that he feels like he’s known her his entire life.

There is a chance, he supposes, that she will be the death of everything that is important to him. That the agenda she swears she’s not a part of will guarantee his downfall, but she is warm and full of life and she looks at him the way nobody ever looks at him anymore and he can’t imagine her doing anything but saving him.

It is lust, he tells himself, that’s making him think these things about her. 

He makes love to her, which is even more reckless than kissing her but less reckless than trusting her, and the gentleness of it surprises him. She touches him with hands that care and when was the last time anyone did that?

There is fumbling for protection, there are awkward angles and false starts, but there is familiarity and she half laughs, half gasps into his ear the first time she feels him inside her and the intimacy of it tightens his throat.

She trembles for minutes afterwards and he doesn’t have to know her (he doesn’t, he reminds himself) to know she feels this was a mistake. She’s worried what he’ll think of her, jumping into bed with him just because he kissed her. She has a boyfriend back home, she says, though that doesn’t feel like the real reason behind her anxiety now. 

“We shouldn’t have,” she starts to say, her lips pressed against his damp chest. “I wanted to, but we shouldn’t have, this could –” and she doesn’t even have to finish the sentence. This could ruin everything. 

“This can’t happen again,” she tells him and she probably thinks she sounds convincing, but he can hear in her voice that it’s not what she wants to say, but feels she has to. He respects it, but wonders how much of her life she’s spent just saying what’s expected of her.

“I know,” he falsely agrees. He wants it to happen again as soon as his body recovers and he wants it to happen again tomorrow, maybe a year from now, maybe five. But he will play by her rules, and he doesn’t take that lightly. He’s never been a rule follower but he finds himself making countless exceptions for her already.

“No one needs to know,” she murmurs before she falls asleep to the sound of the rain in Oregon.

He’ll know. Every time he looks at her, he’ll know. That’ll have to be enough.


	7. "kiss me."

“I can’t,” he groans in frustration, his mouth pressed against the sweaty skin of her neck. She can’t believe this is happening. Not here, not now, not when she finally has him in her bed again. 

“You can’t?” she repeats, the disbelief evident in her voice. There is evidence pressed against her thigh that is telling her that he _can_ , but apparently he’s having some sort of crisis that’s stopping them from getting to the point.

“The fox,” he says as way of explanation.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“The fox, behind us, that thing has eyes and they’re following me and I’m not sure how I’m expected to perform when that thing is staring at my ass. Not when it’s been.. 312 days since the last time we did this, Scully.”

This isn’t going as planned at all. She wore his shirt, she skipped the underwear, she listened to his rant about monsters and something about changing motels but when he was done, she spread her legs ever so slightly and he seemed to forget about needing to go anywhere.

But now there’s this, this stupid fox on the wall that’s stopping her from getting laid for the first time in almost a year and this would happen to her, she thinks. This is somehow exactly how it was always going to go. Their big reunion. This is fitting. She would laugh if she wasn’t so pathetically turned on by this whole damn thing.

She doesn’t understand. This is hardly the seediest motel she’s allowed him to fuck her in. Hell, they’ve _lived_ in worse.

She sighs, sitting up slightly as he rolls off of her. She lifts his shirt over her head, balling it up and making a calculated toss of it across the room. She’s always had good aim. It lands on the fox’s head, covering the eyes that Mulder swears he’s seen move.

“There,” she says proudly, settling back on the bed and brushing her hair out of her face. “We good?”

He looks at her with that look in his eyes, the one that’s all love and lust and admiration rolled up into one. He’s looked at her like that for nearly half of her life at this point, but it still makes her squirm.

“Kiss me,” he tells her, because she likes when he asks for it. 

She pulls him down to her, her fingers caressing the back of his neck as her mouth drives him to distraction, kissing him like it’s their first time and they’re in no rush. Kissing him like she used to on early Sunday mornings in their kitchen. 

She kisses him breathless and he forgets where they are.


	8. “you need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”

Her eyes sting, her tears freezing on her face as soon as they fall. She feels the ache in her bones and her lungs burn with every inhale of cold air. She presses her cracked lips to his forehead and tastes blood. His, she thinks, but she’s not sure.

He is a significant weight in her arms, his body damp and heavy, and she holds him as close as she can. It occurs to her for the first time, finally, that they might die out here. She’s almost too cold to be scared.

“Mulder,” she murmurs, her voice hoarse and underused. He doesn’t react, doesn’t even move, this foolish hero of hers that followed her to the ends of the earth. He has given her his warmest clothes.

“Mulder,” she repeats, louder this time, “you need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.” 

By ‘this’, she means survive. By ‘this’, she means live. She realizes the list of things she wants to do without Mulder is frighteningly short. 

She hears a moan, a strangled and sad noise of discomfort and her hands reach for his face. Her fingers trace his eyebrows, his nose, his lips. She loves him desperately.

“Wake up, Mulder. Please.”

She is not too proud to beg. Not anymore. 

There is a cough, his head turned into her body to shield him from the wind. She would weep with relief if she had the energy.

“If -” he starts to say before another coughing fit starts. She holds him through it, rubbing his back, cradling him to her. 

“If you didn’t want to kiss me, Scully, you could have just said so. This was a very dramatic way to get out of it.”

She laughs despite the pain it causes because only Mulder could make her laugh here when she still thinks she might die. But Mulder is awake and with her and that means anything is possible. 

She’ll kiss him one day, she vows, far away from here. She’ll show him how much she wants it.


	9. "i think i'm in love with you and i'm terrified."

The steady beeps of the machines are the only real assurance he has that she’s actually alive.

_Beep, beep, beep._

Her hand is clammy, cold and small underneath his. He thinks if he thinks hard enough, her fingers will squeeze back. Just one squeeze, that’s all he needs, maybe he could get some sleep. But you can’t will people back to life, no matter how hard you try, and her hand is motionless beneath his.

Her feet must be cold, too. He pulls a blanket off the empty bed next to her, drapes it over her bare legs. He settles back in his chair, reaches for her hand.

_Beep, beep, beep._

It is past visiting hours. He thinks the nursing staff might be afraid of him. His tantrum earlier had earned him a reputation. He wonders if they discussed him among themselves. 

Just let him sit with her, they’d say. It’s easier for everyone that way.

_Beep, beep, beep._

He thinks of his dark apartment. The taste of gun metal in his mouth. The sound of her sister’s voice challenging him to do something. Anything but what he was doing, which was nothing. 

He thinks of her mother, her cross, her grief.

He thinks of young Dana with the bright eyes and bright hair, keeping up with her brothers. He wishes he’d known her then. He wishes he’d grown up with her, had known her his whole life rather than the short time it’s been. 

He needs more time.

_Beep, beep, beep._

“I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified,” he whispers, for her ears only. 

It feels good to get the words out. He imagines them making their way into her brain, finding her in whatever dark recesses she’s lost in, comforting her, warming her up from the inside.

He hopes he finds the courage to tell her again one day, when his love for her is less terrifying and more familiar. He knows eventually, he will forget a time in his life when it wasn’t true. He will love her for so long, it will be all he’s ever known.

Her fingers twitch beneath his. It’s slight, barely there, but he feels it. 

_Beep, beep, beep._


	10. "i'm pregnant."

**i.**

“I’m pregnant,” she says and she pictures her mother’s face, thousands of miles away. 

It’s been so, so long since she’d been able to call with good news. She had imagined excitement, a sob of relief or joy, a “congratulations, honey” that would hug her through the phone. Her throat aches when all she gets is a gasp and a silence that is full of questions that she is too polite to ask. 

So she pictures her mother telling her friends over brunch the following day, telling another tale of poor Dana, the lost daughter so tragic that even her good news is bad.

**ii.**

“I’m pregnant,” she says and the only three friends she has all regard her with pity, sorrow, and more than a little worry. One of them tries to fake a smile for her but fails and she watches him tug nervously at his bow tie. 

She is almost too much to look at with her watery eyes and her cold, fidgety hands. Too much.

They will do anything they can for her, they vow with a determination she feels is heartfelt but forced. It’s what he’d want them to tell her. 

**iii.**

“I’m pregnant,” she says and her boss’ face falls. 

Oh. Oh, _no_.

He’d lost more than he realized out in the Oregon woods. 

He can’t wait to leave, to get away from her, to sit in his car in the parking lot with his hand on his gun and wonder how he’ll ever forgive himself.

**iv.**

“I’m pregnant,” she tells him. 

She can see the disbelief, the wonder, the awe on his beloved face. She can even see the smug smirk and can hear the pride in his voice when he makes a joke about how powerful that Mulder family DNA really is. He’d done the impossible, he’s practically a superhero.

She can see him mentally doing the math, figuring it all out, for once being grateful for the lack of crop circles in England that resulted in her in his bed.

He is going to be a father, a good one, he tells her. Better than the father he had, though that’s not exactly a high benchmark.

He is going to be a dad and she is going to be a mom and that makes the most sense in the world. 

**v.**

“I’m pregnant,” she says and the words echo off the white walls of her empty hospital room. 

She hopes he can hear her.


End file.
